r/Payroll

I am leaving my job and want my $1k bonus. Payroll deadline is (allegedly) Monday at 11am - weekly pay. I always get paid my direct deposit (with the bonus intact, if there is one) at 11pm Thursday night. Was planning on quitting Wednesday morning. Does that give them enough time to take that bonus away and just pay me the minimum wage? What about if I submit my notice on Thursday?

Is what I'm doing ethically questionable? Yes. But this company is crazy and absolutely would fire me in a second's notice if it benefited them or if I accidentally pissed off my manchild boss. I am quitting for a more stable job before I 1) get fired for something stupid, or 2) lose my job because the company does a lot of shady stuff and will eventually get shut down (the founder's last company was raided by the FTC).

Thanks!

Autistic 30M with an extensive technical support and customer service background (14 years) with a personal passion for finances and retirement planning.

Any tips or recommendations to get my first job in payroll?

Is college the only option?

I have about 3 years of payroll experience. I started in-house and have now been in a service bureau environment for a little over a year, and I’m honestly exhausted.

I never felt this burned out doing in-house payroll. Managing multiple clients, different setups, random requests, system configurations, and constantly running into things I’ve never dealt with before is getting to me. Lately I’ve also had some older setup issues come back that I didn’t realize were wrong at the time, and it’s really shaken my confidence.

I recently got promoted and passed my CPP, but somehow I feel like I know less than ever. I’ve been asking my supervisor a ton of questions because I’d rather ask than make another mistake, but it makes me feel like I should know more by now.

At this point I dread getting emails because I assume it’s another issue I have to figure out.
For anyone who’s worked both in-house and service bureau, is this just the reality of service bureau payroll? Did you feel less burned out when you went back in-house? I can’t tell if I’m overwhelmed, if I need more experience, or if this model just isn’t for me.

I’m hoping to get some insight from the payroll community because I’m starting to seriously look at what my next career move should be.
I’m relatively young, motivated, and currently working in a payroll/invoicing management role. I’ve worked my way up over the last few years and have gotten a lot of hands-on experience in a pretty high-volume environment.
I currently handle payroll for roughly 1,000–2,000 employees across multiple states, along with invoicing, audits, corrections, bonuses, mileage, timekeeping, billing, process improvement, training, and troubleshooting. I’ve also built SOPs, helped develop processes from the ground up, worked with multiple payroll/timekeeping systems, and gotten pretty involved with Excel, Power Automate, Forms, SharePoint, and automation.
At this point, I’m looking for something fully remote. I’d ideally like to stay somewhere in the payroll/payroll operations space, but I’m also open to positions where my experience would transfer.
The biggest challenge I’m running into is that recruiters keep telling me remote payroll positions are extremely competitive and difficult to find. I’m also realizing that I may be searching too narrowly by only looking at traditional “Payroll Manager” positions.
I’m not looking to leave because I hate my job or because I’m trying to escape work. I actually enjoy payroll and problem-solving. I’m just at the point where I want to continue growing, increase my earning potential, and find a company where I can build a long-term career — preferably without having to give up the flexibility of working remotely.
At this point, I’m honestly just trying to figure out where are people actually finding legitimate remote payroll jobs. 😂 I’ve applied to what feels like a million positions, gotten countless emails saying they “loved my experience” only for the position to move forward with other candidates, and have run into more questionable/scammy postings than I care to admit.
So I figured I’d ask the people who actually work in this field. If you were in my position with this experience, where would you start looking and what direction would you explore?
I’m open to hearing anything — different job titles, industries, companies, career paths, or even things I may not realize my experience qualifies me for. I just don’t want to spend the next six months screaming into the void of indeed applications. 😂

Hi fam, please help :)

I work for a school, and we overpaid some employees by issuing longevity stipends. Long story short, the agreement does NOT make clear that the stipend is one time for reaching a milestone, and not a continuing annual amount after having reached that milestone.

So now we're going to retract the inappropriate pay from employees over 6 payrolls. They are worried they will end up overpaying on taxes??

We have already explained to them that taxes are a percentage of your wages, and that reducing the wages will reduce the taxes. Thus, they will not have taxes overwithheld.

Some people don't get it, and some people just wanna be mad.

How can we better explain this for the folks that actually are trying to understand?

When an employee passes away, do you process the final payment through the payroll but then not actually release the payment until probate or any relevant documentation is provided by the executor or family that notified us of the employee's passing?

Orrr do you keep that payment on hold and process and pay it via the payroll only after the documentation is received?

Also, what happens if you dont hear back at all after a year++, do you just keep that money on hold?